Chapter Text
The clock began without a sound, without any grand announcement or anxious inkling that would alert the bomb.
The bomb in question was panting as he launched one foot in front of the other. The sidewalks in the surrounding blocks of UA were worlds nicer than the jagged, crack-littered paths snaking around his old running routes, but the air of caution hovering over all students the second they stepped foot outside the gates was enough to make the journey rough. The paranoia clung to Katsuki in particular. Wherein he had been looking over his shoulder every few seconds during his first few months in the dorms, he now only found himself locking his eyes onto every alleyway, and simply taking note of every passerby rather than glaring at them with an already decided conviction that they were going to grab him next. Still, regardless of any improvement, the run wasn’t his favorite. The sidewalks would never be as smooth as the track or the treadmill.
Katsuki wasn’t one to push off responsibility, though, and the dorms were quickly running low on fresh produce. “The dorm” really meant himself, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t offended by the loosely-defined food in the cabinets that would surely take out the whole of Class 1-A in the form of sodium overdose and malnutrition. Save for maybe that Glitter Bastard and Four Eyes, every one of those shits were going to die a slow and painful death if not for his godly presence in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be very heroic if he became an accessory to suicide by denying them his services. Besides, it was a very handy thing to hold over their heads now that many were growing desensitized to his explosive threats (and God, wasn’t that a pain in the ass).
The nearest market was, thankfully, near. During their residency on UA grounds, all students had a mandatory tracking app on their phones--and a phone provided if the student did not have their own device--for safety purposes. It would have been a massive legal situation if it weren’t for the fact that UA gained custody of those living in the dorms. The app could be deactivated at any time, but it would immediately alert staff and land the student in huge shit if they didn’t have an acceptable explanation. The only tolerated excuse pretty much amounted to an approved outing outside of the school zone with clearance to deactivate the tracker. The software application was connected to an external tracker as well, built by the support tech students, to ensure that it could still run in the event of the phone battery dying. Staff would also be alerted if a tracker exited the school zone, which consisted of campus and the surrounding ten blocks. Of course, there was also a record of when a student left campus, but that in and of itself didn’t raise alarms unless the student continued out of bounds. The market began only four blocks from the school gates.
Katsuki made the trip often enough that the regular vendors recognized him, and not just from the news. Initially, Takeda from the peaches stand eyed him like she expected him to drop a few into his joggers’ pockets when she wasn’t looking. He had known what she was doing, and why she was doing it, but it didn’t stop the pang through his chest from catching him off-guard. It was far from the first time he had been instantly judged to be of bad character, but coming from someone who had a short, soft figure and warm face that reminded him of Auntie Inko made it feel that much sharper and cold. He had to tame his face into something less of a defensive scowl and pull back on the glare as he exchanged yen for a bag to carry the fruit. Her eyes followed his hand every step of the way. He had swallowed and turned away without another word.
It was three more purchases, and three weeks, until they exchanged words rather than just goods. She was the one to initiate.
“You sure like peaches a lot, don’t you?”
He looked up at her for the first time. The way she in particular always scrutinized him had him with his head down whenever he passed by. It didn’t hide his face very well, though he would never admit to aiming for that, because she was almost a head shorter than him when she wasn’t sitting on her little stool behind the display. He searched her face and found it more open than he anticipated. The tilt of her head still spoke of caution, but her eyes weren’t narrow like they had been the first time he bought from her.
“Yeah,” he lied after a moment. He blinked. Why was he lying? “Well… Not really.” Shit, he needed to explain more than that, because now he just seemed like an ass. “They’re not for me.”
Takeda leaned forward a smidge, her elbow coming to rest on the table. Her eyes faced his straight-on as she tilted her head in a different direction, no longer facing away from him but rather lowering to one side in curiosity.
“Who are they for? Y’all live in those dorms at that school, so they’re not for your folks, are they?” Her speech had a slight curve to it, like she was speaking around something in her mouth, but he didn’t mention it. Katsuki wasn’t surprised that she knew he lived at the dorms, but he was thrown off by her persistence. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other like he wanted to leave, but the conversation hadn’t been completely unwelcome.
“For my classmates. I don’t like sugar. One of ‘em needs a lot ‘cause of his quirk. Figured I’d make something decent so it wouldn’t be my fault if he dies of scurvy or diabetes from eating only garbage and pastries.” He talked into the bag as he set four of the fuzzy fruits inside, and she chuckled. A glance up showed a disarming smile as she watched him like she was seeing someone new. Her eyes looked a lot more like Auntie’s when they were crinkled like that, and suddenly a hint of a twitchy, miniscule grin was on his own downturned face. Her eyebrows did a weird thing where they lifted and her Auntie Inko eyes became doughy, like she might have been sad or something, but a gentle smile he had never seen stayed put. She seemed to do another once-over of his expression while she thought of what to say next.
“Well, I hope that he likes them,” is what she settled on. Katsuki gave her a quick nod and a ghost of a bow before he practically ran away from the awkward moment. Damn crybaby old ladies and their crybaby sons… but from then on, he was surprised at how he didn’t need to numb the spikes in his chest that her glares had planted. He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it, but since he had no need to, it was like he could breathe again under her gaze.
It had been almost a full year, and he still frequented her stand when it was in season. Towards the end of November her stock shifted to jams and jellies, and though he bought those less, he still tried to pass by and nod. Nine times out of ten--the only exception being when she was busied by a customer-- she roped him into a chat at the sight, each one longer than the last. As much of a hurry as he was in to finish his early morning grocery run and shower before classes started, he never ignored her beckoning hands.
Takeda was the best-case scenario among the market vendors. Granted, the ones that held some tension around him did all lose at least a portion of it, but he hardly let any others build a relationship with him. The next-up contender for the friendliest seller was the Matsudas’ shy son, Yuuto, and he was only a hair louder than Katsuki himself acted while he shopped. Typically Katsuki would never describe himself as quiet, but he knew his usual demeanor was a far cry from palatable. The last thing he wanted to do was to cause a scene in the already claustrophobic street with Yuuto’s overprotective dads breathing down his neck any time the kid greeted him with a timid, “Hi, Mr. Bakugou!”
They weren’t disrespectful, though. His mornings were his calmest times, and it played in his favor. The civility went both ways, for the most part. The most issues he had were with customers; idiots who decided to be a little too touchy, someone here and there that recognized the “Beast of UA” in his tank top and sweats with the perfect excuse and shield of a crowd to get close. It was fine--he was more than capable of defending himself if it came to it, and it wasn’t an exceedingly regular experience. It was fine . It was just as annoying as the double-takes, occasional gasp and fearful gaze, or the rare glare. He was used to it. It didn’t cut into him the way that Takeda’s initial distrust did.
The bustle of the thin six A.M. crowd filtered into his ears about half a block from the first few stands. He by-passed them with an easy speed and made a beeline for the main street, scanning the layout. There were subtle shifts in location, but the vendors were in their standard spots as far as he could discern.
His shopping went by smoothly, and a glance at his phone revealed that he had only burnt up twenty three minutes. A paper bag housing three smaller, separate bags from different stops cradled in one arm, he breezed through the twists and turns of the marketplace in search of his last necessary stall. Standing at the corner of the main street after circling the adjacent blocks several times, he spotted Kudo’s spice table--directly on the opposite side of the school’s ten-block boundary. A deep growl grew from his lungs as he tried to explode the street sign with his mind. Another check-in with his phone told him that he had wasted a whole eight minutes seeking a damn vendor that he couldn’t even go to because of a measly twenty feet . He huffed and whirled around to scout out some mediocre replacement on the route back towards UA.
He didn’t bother to mask his aggravation as he strode towards an unfamiliar seller. She held herself with an air of thinly veiled excitement as her attention locked onto him. An ear-to-ear grin stretched her wrinkled skin. Her entire body pushed forward onto her elbows as she rested her chin on her clasped hands, a pleased glint in her eye as she analyzed him.
“Oh, a home cooked meal truly is a heart-healthy gift, isn’t it?” She purred before his fingers had even made contact with one of her spice bottles. He lifted it and gave her an uninterested look out of one eye, a brow raised as he read the label.
“I guess,” he mumbled, not entirely sure what she wanted from him with that weird fucking question.
“You must really care for someone, if you’re cooking for them. It’s the language of the soul, you know.”
“Uh huh…” he glanced around briefly, half hoping for someone to meet his incredulous gaze and validate just how off this one-sided conversation was. The crowds around him were blissfully ignorant. “How do you know I’m not cooking for myself, huh? I’m not cooking for someone like some bullshit love language or whatever.” If his tone was a bit harsh, then she was asking for it, making weird assumptions about him as if she knew anything about him. He ignored her laugh as he picked up two of the bottles.
“If you say so, sweetheart.” What the fuck? He fumed as he almost slammed the two in front of her still clasped hands, shifting his big ass bag to the crook of his elbow and digging in his pocket for his wallet. She picked up the spices and raked her black-brown eyes over them. Her acrylic nails, a pale green that did no favors for her undertones, clacked against the glass and she turned back and down to pull out two replicas. Katsuki watched her like a hawk, cash in hand, tracking her movement for the moment she tried to scam him. When she finished clinking them together inside a tiny tote bag, she blinked up at him as the picture of innocence. She seemed to read Katsuki’s pinched face, and delicately set the tips of her nails on the lids of the bottles he’d first handed over and soothed, “Oh, I don’t sell the displays,” with a sickly sweet smile.
He rolled his eyes and grabbed for the bag, peering inside to ensure that she didn’t put in empty bottles or some shit equivalent. He handed the cash over without any more fuss and added the new bag to the collection in his arms. Paying no mind to the way she wiggled her clawed fingers as a wave goodbye, he turned on his heels and jogged in the direction of the school. The thicker of the crowds parted as he stormed through, his aura of confusion-turned-anger apparently coming through particularly strong. He certainly wasn’t complaining, especially after he’d wasted almost ten minutes earlier and could use the extra space to make his way home. At six forty one, he made eye contact with Takeda. She gave him a big grin and a wave while he gave her a nod and a smile he knew she couldn’t see from that far without her glasses. He slowed and closed the distance.
“Bakugou! It’s good to see you!” Her wide smile as she called to him showed off the small tusks behind her teeth that had originally taken him a few visits to notice. He grunted in response. “You on your way back?”
“Yeah.”
“No sweets for those poor , deprived classmates of yours?” She whined playfully, waggling a package of her newest cobbler with puppy dog eyes. Unfortunately for her (and a quarter of the morons he lived with), he had been exposed to a vaccine at a young age and had long since grown an immunity to the kicked puppy pout.
“They’ll live. They need to toughen up, anyway.” With a mischievous curl of his lip, he lifted one of the spice bottles from its position at the top of his bag and let the label peak over the edge for her to read. She gasped.
“ Bakugou ! You’re gonna kill those boys, for real this time!”
“Just the boys?” He cocked an eyebrow. She waved a dismissive hand.
“Ah, hero gals are strong. They can handle a little heat.” He snickered.
“Good, but none of those dumbasses deserve your pity. They’ve had it coming for a long time, constantly nagging me… and someone keeps thinking they can get away with fuckin’ with my leftovers.”
“Y’know,” she leveled him with the most serious gaze she could as her voice lowered ominously, “they might just abandon your cookin’ all together. Call it a safety hazard. Whatever would ya’ do then?”
“Good riddance,” he snorted. Her grave façade cracked and she chuckled, swatting a hand in his direction.
She drawled, “Oh, please. Don’t act like you wouldn’t care.” He growled at her without any heat, mindlessly looking over her collection of products. Her eyes left his face to wander near his cargo. “Le’mme see that one more time, hon’,” she asked after a moment. He blinked at her until she made a motion for his bag.
“Oh,” he plucked out the bottle he had shown her before and set it in her outstretched hand. She gave it a solid once-over while he waited expectantly.
“Oh!” She squealed, eyes lighting up as she turned the label towards him and pointed to it. “Aurora Spices! I know her!”
“Ah. You do, huh?” He replied, his grimace going ignored as Takeda excitedly gestured, keeping an anxious watch on the bottle soaring through the air in her grip.
“Yep! Oh, I’m so happy you happened to run into her!” He groaned.
“Well, it’s not like I had any damn choice in the matter. My usual guy up and bailed on me,” he mumbled the last part, “fuckin’ bastard…”
“That’s a shame,” Takeda sympathized, “but I’m sure Araya’s stock will more than make up for it! Even if you try to melt your helpless classmates’ faces off, y’all are gonna love it, I swear. It’s some of the best I’ve ever tasted. She’s simply magical.” Katsuki rolled his eyes at her gushing.
“Thought the hag’s name was Aurora ,” he put air quotes and a haughty tone around the pretentious name.
“That’s her business name, silly,” Takeda scoffed. “Her whole theme is the ‘aurora borealis,’ y’know, that English name for the northern lights? Spices so delicious, they light your food up like the aurora borealis! Her name sounding close to ‘aurora’ is just the cherry on top!”
“Sounds stupid. Doesn’t even make sense,” he grumbled. He snatched the bottle out of her now calmed hand.
“Sure it does! Well… it might be a little lost in translation,” Takeda laughed. “I didn’t do it justice, anyway--ol’ Araya’s always been smarter than me.”
“Oi, hush!” Katsuki snapped at her. “You’re plenty smart to be running this joint and your folks’ farm profits on your own. Don’t sell yourself short for some shitty slogan .”
“Bakugou,” she said softly, her face beaming at him so brightly, it made him look away. Her calloused, round fingers covered his on the table and gave them a squeeze. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Yeah, whatever. I swear, if I catch you throwing yourself under the bus like that again…” He let the threat hang in the air as he gave her a glare that could have made a pro-hero shrivel and burn. She giggled at it.
“Of course, hon’.” She peeked down and read her watch. “Well, I won’t keep you. Classes start soon, yeah?” He made a noise of affirmation. “Then get your butt back to that school, young man!” She smacked his hand so lightly he barely felt it, and he huffed a quick laugh.
“A’ight, a’ight, I’m going! Damned hag!”
“You have a good day, you hear?” He shot her a smirk and rolled his eyes again as he walked around her stand and picked up the pace.
It was seven on the dot when he reached the dorms and organized the groceries with the efficiency of a boy running out of post-workout showering time. The day from there flew by in an atypical blur, a restlessness settling into Katsuki’s limbs from every second of his washing routine, to moving between each button on his shirt, to taking dedicated maths notes, and jittering down to an extra kick in his step as he walked briskly from the school building to the residential one.
The day passed in the blink of an eye from environment to environment, but he wasn’t absent . He’d felt a sort of distance from his actions before, in the aftermath of Kamino, the sludge villain incident, the sports festival; it was a displacement, where he was constantly an inch to the left of his body and he could still feel the slime on him and in his mouth, or the grasp on his neck and the unforgiving restraining chair, or the sharp chains pinching his torso and the steam from his breath under the metal that cut into his cheeks. He’d known that type of emptiness, where memories slipped through fingers on autopilot. This was far from that. The way he made movements without his awareness was much lighter. He wasn’t separated from himself, one foot trapped in the past. No, he wasn’t absent, just absent-minded. It was almost like normal teenager behavior, only odd due to the teenager who was exhibiting it.
“Are you dying?” A flat voice cut into his head. Shinsou looked him up and down as he leaned against the doorframe, his palm smushing into his bored expression while he yawned. “You’re all spacey today, it’s weird as shit. Even the densest of the bunch are on edge.” Denki made a vague protest from somewhere in the common room, obviously listening in to the confrontation. “Maybe you should follow my lead and take a nap, rest for once in your goddamned life.” He squinted, gave Katsuki another appraising once-over, and scoffed, “Who am I kidding, you’re not listening to reason. Since you’re clearly not busy, are you gonna get started on our food or not?”
Katsuki blinked at him as he was suddenly barraged with monotonous words, shooting him a sour face. He hesitated to bite back for a fraction of a second, just long enough to remember his surroundings; he was situated in the kitchen, all mellow, solitary, and peacefully quiet until the purple furby butted in to give him shit.
“First off, see if I bother being your ungrateful ass’ chef.” His hands curled like claws on the counter’s surface to emphasize just how scary he looked in his apron. “ Second off, fuck off.”
“Oh, right, my apologies, Chef Ramsey. I hope I didn’t insult his holiness--to make it up to you, should I grovel like those guys you got wrapped around your finger…” he gestured loosely in front of him, barely trying and failing to point towards the common room, “or would it suffice if I just start drooling right here? Or, wait,” he glanced down to the floor between his socked feet, “perhaps you’d rather I hold off ‘til I can aim for my plate?”
“Go back to sleep,” Katsuki spat, “and starve.” Shinsou snorted, the corner of his mouth flicking up as he squinted.
“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes and pushed away from the doorway. He waved an apathetic hand over his shoulder. “If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, turn off the oven first.” The common room livened a bit as he stalked around the kitchen to rejoin them, bad whisperers gossiping over his ‘ bakugation .’ Katsuki could just hear Mina’s jeering about Shinsou’s apparent failed interrogation, to which the purple troll doll foiled his idiot brigade with a perplexed, “ What the fuck is a bakugation ?” Katsuki pulled out his aids and shoved them in his pocket under the apron.
Finally having a moment to himself with the clarity of mind to appreciate it, he sighed. Even his own exhale was dulled downed by the thick silence, and wasn’t that a breath of fresh air.
He’d been facing the cabinets when Shinsou so rudely interrupted him in his task of existing calmly. Pushing away his haze, he got to work, pulling out pans and filling the counter with ingredients. His bounty of chicken thighs, broccolini, and garlic reaped from the market that morning was laid out on display, as well as the rice and oils that were already in the kitchen. The treasure of his market run laid within the cabinet he had found himself mindlessly peering at before the shithead’s intervention. The truth was, while he had fun spooking Takeda with the powdered capsaicin extract he’d purchased--made purely of the stuff that gave his favorite peppers their kick --he never actually intended to include it in the whole batch, only his own dish (and the leftovers, to ward off that damned thief). Instead, he poured in nearly two tablespoon’s worth of cayenne, the second spice that he hadn’t showed her. He was being considerate, not merciful .
He didn’t even bother to acknowledge the underwater warble aimed in his general direction from time to time, letting his classmates answer their own questions and shutting down any attempts at small talk. Lipreading was unreliable at best and God knew he didn’t have it in him to stare at some dumbass’ mouth for a few minutes every time said dumbass decided to waste his time. He did give an oh-so-respectful grunt at the occasional sign, but no one tried starting an entire conversation, thankfully.
When the time finally rolled around, he barked something that might’ve been like, “ Ay! ” He rapped his knuckles on the fridge, looking into the common room and effectively catching the attention of the class sprawled about the place. He wordlessly lifted a bowl in his other hand and turned back towards the stove, where the food sat ready. Behind him, in fewer than five seconds flat, a cluster of them had nearly fallen over themselves to gather where he’d stood moments before. One hard look had them clumsily settling in a line like little kids, and he huffed a 100% unamused breath. Individually, each grabbed a bowl from where he’d set them on the counter and brought them to be filled. At their proximity, he heard the more polite of the bunch’s “thank you”s, and grunted every now and then in response.
He dusted his special spice over his own bowl with rice, broccolini, and teriyaki chicken, slightly excited for the treat he’d got himself. The hearing aids came back at a lower setting, and he wandered towards the closest table to plop down beside Eijirou.
“Thanks, Katsuki,” he signed with a wide smile and crinkled eyes.
“‘S whatever,” he spoke. Then, his voice lowered dangerously; “Whoever the fuck keeps touching my shit in the fridge will get a nasty surprise with this one, though.” Across the table, Denki gulped under his sweeping death glare.
“What--oh God , dude, that’s making my eyes water from here ,” Mina’s nose scrunched and leaned away from Katsuki’s red-tinted rice. The grin he pointed at the two of them showed all of his teeth and was downright manic, making them shudder as he gleefully shovelled a chicken piece into it without breaking eye contact. Hanta and Eijirou chuckled at their terror.
He lingered longer than usual, relishing the way his taste buds exploded with his new prize and the praise that washed over him. His idiot brigade didn’t mention it, but they seemed pleased.
At the end of the night, he actually reached over and grabbed Eijirou’s empty bowl as well when he stood to wash the dishes. The other three cheerfully followed him like lost ducklings, depositing their own bowls and chopsticks into the sink and ignoring his growls as he moved each one out of the way of his pan cleaning process with increasing agitation. As they scampered off to the couches, Eijirou called over from where he leaned against the kitchen counter.
“Now, kids, what do we say?” His tone dripped with the sweet condescension of a preschool teacher.
“Thank you, Bakugou,” they chorused in perfect unison with a practiced dead tone. Eijirou giggled and Katsuki scoffed. His gaze was soft on Katsuki’s side, and Katsuki let it be until he finished up. He wiped the last of the water off of his hands and gave a nod.
“‘Night, fucker.”
“‘Night, Kats!”
The dim glow of the numbers on his alarm clock spelled out ten ‘til nine when he drifted off to sleep. As those numbers rose steadily through the night, the others in the dorms followed his lead, until eventually all was as calm as the home of twenty children could be. In that calm, in the quiet of a building of content, well-fed and blissfully unaware kids, the bomb’s clock finally reached zero.